Ed Moltzen

The Chart

October 22, 2008

One JeffSherlock, of Virginia USA, has left a "Dear John" letter for the Linux community on the Ubuntu Forums board. It's worth quoting in its entirety:

I am quitting Linux and Open-source sever software forever(sic)

I have spent countless hours, each day, for five years fiddling with Linux, Apache, MySQL, and the endless numbers of plug-ins and unfinished hobby-prjects.

I will not be wasting anymore of my time reading the idiotic guides and tutorials which fail to ever get to the point about anything at all, and are filled with incorrect commands.

I will not be wasting any more of my time on the endless "Compile this and Compile that" nonsense of the Apache family of incomplete projects.

I will not be wasting any more of my time on Linux nor MySQL riduclous command line verbage - which always appears to be intended as cutesy rather than practical.

Am I a Windows fan? Almost - it works out of the box. Am I a Microsoft fan - of course not. Who could like such a lousy company run by arrogant creeps.

I am practical. I cannot afford to spend another five years fiddling with other peoples' unfinished hobby-project software. I must earn a living, which I cannot do with Linux-based computers that refuse to function worth a damn.

Fix all of the endless problems in Linux - every one of them, then maybe you'll win the battle against Microsoft. For me, I must earn a living. I cannot do this with computers that are loaded with nonfunctioning Linux crap.

I won't logging in to read the pathetic "Windows has worms" nor the "Big Conspiracy" rubbish written by twelve year olds who use their computers to play rap mp3s and then claim to be "Experts".

Free as in "I don't need this waste of time",

Goodbye all.

In response, some folks on the Ubuntu forum wished him well with whatever software worked best for him. Others take issue with the notion that software developers, working for free, have to do anything for JeffSherlock.

JeffSherlock, if you can read this, please send a note saying what the final straw was that brought you to this point. After all, five years is a lot of time to invest in any relationship.